


Old Gods and New Tricks

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: AU liberties taken ahahaha, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Danganronpa-based set of gods, Fluff, Ghosts, Gods, I may've gotten kind of carried away...., I'm Sorry, M/M, Mentions of Myth & Folklore, Occasional angst, like Junko is an undying Goddess of Despair?, paranormal detectives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-03-31 07:49:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13970577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Kokichi Oma and Shuichi Saihara are working a paranormal mystery together, which brings them to a familiar anthropologist’s library at the heart of a sprawling graveyard-city.  Hajime hired them to unravel the secret of his boyfriend’s absurd luck, see.  It can ONLY POSSIBLY end well.





	1. The Library of the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Hello~~~ Welcome to chapter one, and thanks so much for clicking on this story. :D I hope you enjoy it if you read!! Ahhh, this was really self-indulgent and fun to write. <3  
> I pushed the idea of Kiyo’s library/museum thingy up in my story pile ‘cause of someone very kind in the comments of my last fic, who expressed interest in seeing more of the Shuichi-Kokichi-Korekiyo ghost team… Thank you very very much, again!!! :’) Buuuut this fic did kind of turn out really different from the other one… Ahhh, sorry. I’ll definitely be writing more ghost-based stories, and I have other ideas for this trio… So if this one isn’t your taste, I’ll have something new in the future!!  
> Also:  
> 1\. Kiyo and his sister have a somewhat different relationship here. I wanted to write about a world where he went to Shuichi for help placating her? You’ll see.  
> 2\. Kiyo’s library/museum is very much inspired by his research lab... And Junko is gonna be a despair goddess like I say in the tags 'cause of that time in Ultra Despair Girls when Toko calls her a goddess of despair! Ahahaha.  
> 3\. Big thanks to Jericho/Jericho_Pryce for the title… <3 I was having a hard time naming this one, and he really helped me out!!

The library where Kokichi Oma and his intrepid detective-y boyfriend were headed was in the middle of such a rotten place, but Shuichi had said that couldn’t be helped.  It was a library honoring their world’s dead, after all – honoring the cultures that came before, and honoring the corpses that had melted their skin and bones into the earth to help new societies grow from what they’d made.  From what they knew.  Rich cultural soil, or something else weird like that.  Lullabies nobody sang anymore out in the _real_ world were sung in that library-crypt, and broken, forgotten things were stored inside lovingly polished glass cases.  Cracked skulls with gemstones worked into the bone like crystallized thoughts; manuscripts with dusty grey pages as fragile as moth wings. 

Even if something hadn’t died quite yet, it could be stored in a library like that, waiting.  All new things would be old someday, after all; gods would be handed down and changed with the people who worshipped them.    

Kokichi had joked that the library sounded like something out of a video game, or one of their friend Himiko’s fantasy novels with all those wand-waving, pointy-hat wizards, and Shuichi had said yeah, that was just about right.  His friend Korekiyo Shinguji ran the place, and he had devoted himself to humanity and all its rot, all the too-many secrets it left behind.   

Shuichi had _also_ said Kokichi didn’t have to come along with him as he went to go check in on dear old Korekiyo for a detective-ing info hunt, but that was ridiculous and they both knew it.  If Shuichi was gonna be strolling out beyond buzzing highways and neon signs and places that sold actual decent soda brands, he sure as hell wasn’t gonna be doing it all alone.  Not anymore; not now that Kokichi and all his infamous laughing clown gang had his back.  D.I.C.E. members _never_ had to go anywhere full of waiting death all by themselves, not unless they wanted to _and_ their Supreme Leader (ahem, Kokichi) couldn’t actually talk them out of it!   

Detective Shuichi Saihara had solved a lot of spooky cases in the past, though, of course – he was the one who had put the famous pianist Kaede Akamatsu’s ghost to rest, once she’d been falsely accused of murder and strung up by a delicate lying noose.  Shuichi was the one who had freed the very confused tourists that got roped into mandatory Russian roulette mahjong tournaments in Celestia Ludenberg’s crumbling old castle, too, burying her spirit in fire and gold…  _And_ he had rescued a really loud team manager from the ghosts of old failed athletes who wanted another chance at glory by stealing his current trainees’ living skins.  Shuichi was amazing!  Not even lying.  But he’d never had someone to travel with him to the heart of half-dead, haunted places like this one, ‘cause his normal investigation partner was terrified of all things supernatural. 

And that was a bonus, right?  Maybe Kokichi kinda wanted to invite himself along more often, and sidle in all close, thinking up witty things to murmur over to Shuichi at just the right moments. Maybe he wanted to see what kinda pranks he could pull in some creepy death-library, and try to make Shuichi laugh in that flustered, honest way he liked to think his detective only laughed around him.

They were in the middle of a sprawling, miles-wide graveyard, just then, with Korekiyo Shinguji’s library waiting at its echoey stone heart.  There were grave-markers in styles from all over the world spiraling around them, just then, some crammed in together like crooked smiling teeth, others standing aloof off by themselves where no flowers would grow.  Sometimes dead things seemed to stir under the earth, shifting in their worm-eaten burial clothes, knocking at the wood of their coffins; sometimes carved stone mausoleum doors groaned and Kokichi found himself jumping at shadows and trying to laugh it off.  It was a place full of prayers to gods Kokichi couldn’t have named, and every now and then he caught himself talking loudly about comedy movies he’d seen recently to drown out the whisperings.  He told Shuichi he wasn’t afraid even a little bit so many times they both might’ve almost believed it was true.  He could smell funeral pyres still smoking in the distance, and told himself he was probably imagining things. 

They slept among the graves, and headed on, Kokichi brushing a spider off Shuichi’s coat with the edge of his long, striped sleeve.  He muttered, “Ick.  There’s another one!  Careful, or they’ll spin webs in your ears and crawl deep into your brain!  That guy who’s obsessed with bugs told me, so it has to be true.”

Back at home in the ordinary living world, Shuichi sometimes took Kokichi around interesting places – bars with arcades in them, maybe, or giant soda emporiums with a gazillion flavors, even gross nonsensical ones perfect for messing with that _other_ detective partner Shuichi brought around.  (Kokichi had gotten good use out of a “Cat Piss” soda, for instance, and now Kaito Momota took a while studying whatever drinks he handed him.)  Sometimes Shuichi ended up hiding out with D.I.C.E. for a week or so, until a gang-related problem blew over or they threw together one of Kokichi’s trademark over-the-top, super-complicated plans to deal with it…  And other times they just flopped on Shuichi’s apartment couch and read in silence for a while, Kokichi’s sock-feet draped over Shuichi’s legs. 

All that was worth a few spiders; all that was worth the ghosts they had to banish back into their earth on the way to the library, even if Kokichi _would_ remember the skin-shriveling feel of unliving hands reaching up to grab at his ankle for the rest of forever.  He gagged on the hard candy he’d been eating at the time, too, and Shuichi probably saved his life with both an exorcism _and_ the Heimlich maneuver.  He got all shy when Kokichi gushed at him about his heroics, afterwards, but it seemed as if maybe he liked that attention, too.  Kokichi was the kind of Supreme Leader who’d awarded fancy titles and homemade medals to his D.I.C.E. members for their accomplishments ever since they were kids – it was important to tell his beloved underlings (and boyfriend, obviously) when they were being wonderful. 

Shuichi scooped up Kokichi’s hand as they walked on, and rubbed at his knuckles like listening to him choke-scream might’ve really rattled him or something.  Kokichi assured him he’d been faking his abject terror, mostly for the ghost’s sake (so he didn’t hurt their feelings, don’t be dumb), but he had a sneaking suspicion his detective didn’t quite believe him.

And finally, deep within that world of waiting dead, they came to Korekiyo Shinguji’s library.  It was huge, like Kokichi had known it would be, full of swaying dangerous staircases that’d make it only too easy for a person to trip and die – full of howling underground labyrinths with bones in the walls and books that probably wouldn’t have been opened for centuries if Mr. Shinguji hadn’t been there to tend to them.  The main library building itself creaked in the wind like a drawling old voice, telling secrets Kokichi couldn’t understand.  The library had no windows, and only one entrance; Korekiyo kept the key tucked into the mysterious bandages winding up his arms.  Actually, Shuichi said he kept a grip on it even while he slept, and he didn’t take off his inexplicable gimp mask then, either.

Korekiyo greeted them at the door with a warm, sing-song voice, telling Shuichi how glad he was to see him still well.  His eyes were a murky, rotting green-gold and very knowing – he nodded to Kokichi like, “Yes, yes, I got your letter, Shuichi.  _This one_ may come inside, too.” 

“Alrighty then,” Kokichi chirped, and Shuichi said they were very grateful.  Thanks, Kiyo.

Kokichi knew he was gonna brag to D.I.C.E. later about how his boyfriend actually had a _cute_ _nickname_ for the keeper of that ancient haunted library.  How many people could say that in the world, probably?  Korekiyo explained where they would be sleeping – he took their bags, drifting away all willowy and ethereal, murmuring under his breath.  He poured them something suspicious to drink and bantered back and forth with Shuichi.  Mostly about some of the recent cases he’d solved that “Kiyo” had managed to watch about on the news?  It was pretty amazing he got any kind of reception out in the middle of a graveyard-city, but hey, Kokichi had seen plenty of weirder things! 

At one point, Kokichi asked what the dangly beads on Korekiyo’s hat meant, and ended up listening to a half-hour long lecture-explanation before they really got to see any of the library…  And by that point Korekiyo mostly wanted to show them other, similar beads, to keep the tangent spiraling onward?

All this to say, Kokichi learned a ton about beads.

Korekiyo’s living quarters were close and quiet, cluttered with artifacts from around the world and a single, strange painting of a woman who looked almost exactly like Korekiyo himself.  Kokichi didn’t ask about it, but he didn’t really have to – Shuichi caught him looking, and whispered, “Please don’t mention _that_.  She doesn’t have use for Korekiyo anymore, and seems happy in such a restless graveyard.  We found her a hundred friends this way: no one is hurt, anymore, and Kiyo’s mind is his own again.  You know?”

Kokichi didn’t _really_ know, but he nodded like he did.  That was enough.  Shuichi kissed his forehead, very lightly, and they slept with the aching mutters of that library all around them.  Hungry things skittered beneath the floorboards, and winds howled in different, contradictory directions around the bookshelves and artifact cases way high up past all those awful staircases.  The next day, they were gonna have to get to work on Shuichi’s latest case!  It had to do with luck, mostly.  Luck in awful life-rattling extremes.                  


	2. All the Hurting People

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi~ Thank you again for clicking on this story/reading!! :O Not a ton of notes this time yet, but maybe I’ll think of something else and come back here? Anyway, have a wonderful day!

So, the death-library, right?  There were statues of Sekhmet that seemed to smirk every now and then, dreaming about wars won a gazillion years ago and deserts far away; there were preserved Thyrsus sticks with pinecones on top that ancient followers of Dionysus may have wielded super drunk and ready to fuck stuff up, still scabbed with wine and blood.  Dead wars – dead guys, impaled on unbreakable divine-frenzy staves.  See?  Even in the rooms where Kokichi recognized the spirits, there were dead things crowded all around, human lives worked into every piece of Korekiyo’s collection.  That, and a lot of cracked pottery? 

Kokichi read from the kinds of books that made Shuichi gasp, “ _No_ – !” for whatever reason, and which generally ended up stuffed back on the shelf with shaking hands.  He tried on a ring that made his skin feel misty and light for a second, too, as if it could float away.  That might’ve been fine, except that he also happened to spot his reflection in one of the Windex-fresh glass cases and – you know what, that definitely wasn’t Kokichi’s own face, just then.  That was some stranger, grinning like they’d just won the lottery.  Kokichi threw off the ring with so much gusto that it bounced away over the floor and he ended up having to spend a while fishing it up from between the boards.

“That was _fun_ ,” Kokichi said, wincing, and Korekiyo snickered very cryptically.  Asked, “You think so?” in one of those voices that wasn’t really looking for an answer.   

Most of the death library’s stacks were winding and nicely organized, at least.  All the dead-person bones got labeled with exactly who they came from.  Very professional, Kokichi imagined.  He got Shuichi to chase him all through those shelves, at one point, and when he finally let himself be caught he ended up pressed against the wall and kissed until he agreed to read through a bunch of boring old letters.  Or, you know – not _that_ boring.  Kokichi learned a lot of out-of-date gossip from them!  If he ever got teleported back in time to whenever those things were written, he’d have had so much blackmail material.  Not a lot about their specific case, though.  Not as much as Shuichi’d been hoping.

This case was a strange one, after all, ‘cause there wasn’t a ton to actually go on.  Usually with hauntings or curses or whatever, there were signs left behind.  But this time?  This time, not so much.

What happened was, somebody named Hajime Hinata had turned up at Shuichi’s office asking him to please, please look into his boyfriend’s ridiculous luck.  So they’d know what brought it on; so they’d know how to deal with it better. 

And that was pretty normal, right?  Maybe someone had decided to curse Hajime’s boyfriend when he was tiny and hadn’t been wearing any kinda protective amulet or whatever.  Could’ve happened!  Or maybe Mr. Boyfriend was being stalked by a persistent trickster spirit or something, like Shuichi’d thought when Kokichi first started messing with him.  (“Not too far off,” he’d declared, later.  Affectionately, of course.  Kokichi’s flippy purple hair; his wild, triumphant cackling…  His _actual band of prankster underlings_.  It still might’ve been said Kokichi had a little bit of chaos stuffed in his pockets, Shuichi had a point.) 

So, sure.  Maybe something like _that_ had happened to this new client.  But then where were the trickster spirit’s footsteps, caught maybe a couple feet back every now and then?  Where was the ghost making rude faces in the background of photographs, or the spellwork branded into this guy’s skin and getting his aura all smudgy with intangible fingerprints?

There wasn’t really _anything_ to explain it.  Not yet.  Plenty of stories and spells involved luck, obviously, because gambling was stupidly fun and chance was really something else.  But not a ton of things could’ve brought on the sort of luck Mr. Hinata’s boyfriend, Nagito Komaeda, had – like the most dramatic, outrageous rollercoaster Kokichi hadn’t gotten to go on yet.  (But would get tickets for a dozen times, if it did, in fact, exist as an actual rollercoaster!  Obviously.)

Hajime had shown Shuichi piles of medical paperwork from the almost-impossible accidents that followed his boyfriend wherever he went, always, _always_ brought on by sudden spurts of wonderful luck.  After one of their first dates went well, and it turned out they both liked mystery movies?  Welp, the guy crushed his foot trying to get out of the way of a rampaging go-kart, zooming around with no driver…  Without even keys in the ignition.  After Nagito got into a university he really wanted?  Their house not only flooded but also simultaneously caught on fire, so one half grew soggy with mold while the other charred to flaky, taunting ashes.  And that sort of thing had been happening since he was a little kid.  Since his parents died in a freak accident like out of a comic book – since before that, probably.

Hajime and Nagito always prepared for the worst, whenever they went out together.  They brought extra nonperishable food in a backpack; they packed stuff to light an emergency fire.  Glossy plastic ponchos, just-in-case climbing equipment.  All that.  Hajime hadn’t leaned on a railing in years, and he was used to Nagito steering him away from anything huge that might fall on him.  More than that, he knew whenever he got hurt even the _littlest_ bit Nagito wondered if it was his fault, somehow.  If being near him had carried misfortune.  As if Hajime had signed a _“Yeah, I’m okay with dying tragically”_ waiver the instant he’d agreed to be not only his friend, but his partner, too.

“His thoughts have gotten…  I dunno.  Really dark about all this, sometimes,” Hajime had confessed to Shuichi.  “Not so much anymore, but I know he talks about how he used to feel like he needed _something_ to end this cycle of good and then awful luck…  I want to help him feel safe.  I want _tools_ to help him feel safe.  Is there anything you can do?”

“I’m…  Not sure,” Shuichi had confessed.  He always downplayed his abilities, after a particular case had gone sour when he was a kid.  He’d hidden behind a glum (yet alluring?  Kind of?) emo hat for the first couple years Kokichi knew him, too, but _now_ that hat was actually hanging up on an old-timey coatrack back in D.I.C.E.’s headquarters.  Kokichi saw it as a personal victory.  “I’ll see what I can do, though, okay?”

Hajime must’ve known Shuichi usually took on cases just that way, because he’d sighed, relieved.  “Okay.  Thanks, seriously.  Nagito says he’ll try to have ‘hope’ in this investigation, but I don’t really think he believes anything’ll come of it.  We’ve read about your other jobs, though.  You’ll do your best, right?”

“He will,” Kokichi had offered from behind Shuichi’s chair.  He ruffled up his detective’s hair a little, grinning fondly, the comic he’d been reading still dangling loosely in his other hand.  “Detective Saihara won’t let you down!”

And then, investigation time.  A little digging convinced Shuichi that yeah, something out of the ordinary definitely had to be up with Nagito Komaeda, and a little _more_ digging had brought them to Korekiyo’s, following up on a theory.  There were records of people born with extreme, inexplicable luck – not brought on by possession or the work of bored ghosts or anything – but it was pretty rare.  Most things left a stain, like grape soda splattered all over the floor of D.I.C.E.’s getaway van.  Most things left a stain, _except_ maybe the work of gods, if they wanted to keep their secrets close. 

Korekiyo wasn’t interested in gods specifically, but he _was_ interested in the people that worshipped them.  He had some stuff on the cult Shuichi was looking into, scattered around here and there, though not a lot of it was probably useful.  Had to do with a pair of warring gods who dealt in Hope and Despair.  Kiyo said they’d been right to come to him, whatever they found.

Shuichi had answered that he was glad – that they had _better_ be right, because people were counting on him.  Shuichi was just like that, sometimes.  Kokichi had seen a couple pictures of Hajime and Nagito together in the file Shuichi’d brought along with them, and he could totally imagine his detective thinking back to them as he pushed from shelf to shelf through Korekiyo’s library.  Reminding himself what he was fighting for. 

Nagito had airy, ruffled hair and a soft smile in those pictures – he always seemed to lean in when Hajime wrapped an arm around him, and Kokichi thought he read a little happy surprise in his face every time.  They were fishing together in some of the pictures, and then they were building a sandcastle.  Stuff like that.  And _then_ they were posing – Hajime shaking his fist and Nagito laugh-shrugging – by the ruined sandcastle, once the thing had not only been swept away by the waves and pooped on by a passing seagull but _also_ half-collapsed into a random sinkhole that really shouldn’t have been possible.  Those pictures were like Shuichi-Kryptonite.    

Kokichi knew Detective Saihara wanted to do well by all the hurting people that came to him – he was a do-gooder like that, the type who lay awake rewriting everything he’d done that day to figure out how he could’ve been better.  Honest and faithful in a way Kokichi imagined most superheroes had to be, even if Shuichi didn’t completely realize it yet.  But _also,_ these two new clients were both still alive.  That was the kicker.  Hajime and Nagito were going to the actual beach together, and worrying over each other and all that mushy stuff.  Shuichi wasn’t too late to do a little good for someone breathing, and Kokichi knew that really lit a fire under him faster than a Supreme Leader ordering their gang to spark some _actual_ flames!     

And so first they combed through the proper stacks, and then they peeked in at the cursed amulets, and _then_ Kokichi got lectured for a while about why exactly no one wanted to duel with him using ancient gilded swords.  (Sorry for trying to encourage a healthy break-time…)  They ate lunch on one of the rickety stairways with their legs swinging down into a grand and cavernous abyss, at least, and Kokichi could’ve sworn he saw one of the statues far below stand up, stretch, and walk away. 

After a while of not really finding anything to work with, they ended up in the labyrinth beneath the library.  Beneath the graveyard, too, so a world of corpses replaced the sky.  Korekiyo said maybe he should have known that would happen.  He also apologized because there wasn’t such a good organization system in the catacombs, since the collection apparently liked getting up and wandering away on its own.  Okay.  They could work with that, Kokichi guessed.

Korekiyo carried a swinging lantern in his long, delicate fingers, and held the door for Shuichi on the way down.   He said, “Doesn’t this remind you of our time at school?” and Shuichi chuckled back and said it did, although they _had_ been trespassing on someone else’s stash of occult books back then.  Kiyo purred, “Oh, yes, of course,” and as he smiled the zipper on his gimp mask twitched almost like a living thing. 

Kokichi wished for a second that _he_ could have been with them back in school, up to whatever kinds of mischief they’d managed with a lot of weird occult books.  But he was with them now, and that had to mean something. 

They walked a while, then.  Korekiyo’s long, silky hair swayed behind him, heavy as noose-rope, and Kokichi saw some really messed up stuff on the walls all around them.  Humanity’s stranger side on display – instruments of torture like he sometimes enjoyed pretending he used on a daily basis, as D.I.C.E.’s diabolical Supreme Leader…  Paintings of disease that seemed wet with pus and blood even then.  Maybe the  _canvas_  was bleeding?  Huh.  There was an actual monkey’s paw, too, twitching its spindly fingers like,  _“Hey guys!  Come over here!”_  which Korekiyo said a lot of poor, dumb people had already wished on.  He didn’t sound too sorry about it, though: said it was an anthropologist’s job to observe, not save people from themselves.  Of course, he and Shuichi went way back, so he’d help him out a little in the information-gathering stage.  It gave them some time to talk, too.

Kiyo did end up talking a lot, as they walked.  He told stories about trickster gods; he told stories about luck.  He  _also_  said there was a minotaur waiting in those catacombs, just like in any self-respecting labyrinth, and Kokichi couldn’t really tell if he was joking. 

By the time they found anything dealing with the “Despair vs. Hope” gods, Shuichi had nodded off over the books they were flipping through a whole bunch of times.  Kokichi figured that was probably bad, for a lot of reasons and definitely not _just_ because some of these books had been locked very tightly shut and/or potentially bound in human skin.  Probably shouldn’t be letting your guard down around creepy _Evil Dead-_ style books like that.  Shuichi wanted to help people, and Shuichi wanted to push himself and push himself as far as he could.  That was why his eyes had those deep, sunken shadows underneath them after cases sometimes; that was why Kaito complained that the guy could live off coffee and whatever energy bars he managed to cram down the detective’s throat while they were chasing down a murderer or a mob or whatever.

But Kokichi wasn’t gonna get outdone by _Kaito Momota_!  Sure they’d just found a set of extremely unsettling masks, apparently detailing some despair goddess’s ever-shifting faces, but if he couldn’t sweet-talk his own boyfriend into getting a little sleep they had a serious problem on their hands.  Kokichi teased his detective about some imaginary drool at the edge of his mouth; he replaced the book Shuichi was holding with a shoe when he drifted off one time.  Stuff like that.  And eventually Shuichi got the hint.  Eventually Shuichi let him guide their way back upstairs, gripping Korekiyo’s lantern between them. 

Shuichi said it was funny how much Kokichi worried about him, lately, given how often he’d talked about upending his whole life and/or murdering him when they’d first met.  He said it all throaty and soft, too.  Half-asleep, so you knew he really, really meant all the love in that voice.  He squeezed Kokichi’s hand, and made him promise to come get him if they found anything truly game-changing.  It was a little sweet that Shuichi still expected a liar like Kokichi to keep his promises.  It was especially sweet because yeah, he absolutely intended to follow through.

Kokichi didn’t think he and Korekiyo would really find anything in the little while left before they’d go to bed, themselves.  He was – of course – very wrong.


	3. Hope and Despair – You Know How it Goes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again~  
> A couple notes about this one:  
> 1\. Sorry, Makoto.  
> 2\. A lot of this happened because of that idea of Nagito representing a reimagined, darker version of Makoto's talent??? I thought... It sounded kinda mythic. Sorry, as always, for any and all mistakes I made!!!
> 
> I hope you have fun with the chapter, if you read it!!! Have a great day.
> 
> AHHHH, I forgot to put the chapter name?? Ahahaha. Sorry.

Not that they stumbled across anything good _right away_ , of course.  Kokichi had to wander back down the swaying, rickety staircases and beneath the earth, first.  He had to get just a little lost in those catacombs, listening for starved half-bull minotaur-y moaning…  Imagining all the stuff that could be trying to kill him right that very second.  The possibilities were exhilarating! 

Kokichi met that coy painting-woman’s eyes on his way back down, too – the one wearing practically Korekiyo’s own face, who he wasn’t supposed to ask about.  (At least not until he and Shuichi got back home…  Wink, wink.)   She wasn’t hurting anyone _anymore_ , apparently, but Kokichi definitely wondered what it was he couldn’t know yet.  It was part of a life before he and Shuichi met: there were so many dang pieces to that life, sometimes it felt overwhelming.  Things like what it would’ve been like to pass Shuichi notes in class, or to be his very first detective partner the way stupid, lucky Kaito got to be.  Shuichi chuckled and offered over a handful of warm words whenever Kokichi demanded to be part of more of his stories, or joked about feeling “unloved” when he got left behind on certain adventures.  Kokichi didn’t really mind that his detective thought he was joking.  He was probably showing off a little too much of his heart, anyway.

If Shuichi said the painting-lady was fine, there probably wasn’t a thing to worry about – but Kokichi made a face at the portrait as he passed by just the same.  A _“What’re you looking at?”_ kind of face.  He wondered about her a little while Korekiyo monologued, too, as they were working all by themselves in that corner of the rotten world.  What had her name been, even?  If she’d hurt people…  If she’d dragged Kiyo’s will away from him through possession or something eerily like it…  Why hadn’t he taken her picture down?

Kokichi wasn’t sure he’d ever completely understand Korekiyo, but that didn’t mean he had a _bad_ time hunting around the labyrinth with him.  After he figured out Kiyo was probably just trying to entertain him – maybe offering up anthropology details because he was enthusiastic and not used to having company around his death-library – Kokichi was able to find a lot more interest in the conversation.  He weaseled out some goofy stories about Shuichi’s school days, too, and Korekiyo bent over laughing almost-silently behind his mask for a long, long while after telling about the time Shuichi got dragged into a school musical by this really enthusiastic guitarist friend of theirs.  It had gone…  Yeah, about as wonderfully as Kokichi might’ve expected.

It was clear Kiyo cared about Shuichi, though, and Kokichi’d given too much of his heart to D.I.C.E. not to think it was kind of nice meeting Shuichi’s non-Kaito friends.  Shuichi _should_ be cared for, even by suspicious crypt-keepers with impressive gimp mask collections.      

And then, you know.  The actual case.  They didn’t find what they were looking for until Kokichi tried on one of the despair goddess masks and peeked at the labyrinth through its clear blue-crystal eyes.  He _could_ have taken credit for some kind of Supreme Leader ingenuity there, but really he was just getting antsy.  Messing around.    

The Goddess of Despair’s masks came in all kinds of eerie flavors, from “really cutesy” to “queenly” to “screaming.”  No matter which mask you picked, though, the world was different through her eyes.  It was full of a history lived out long before Kokichi was born; full of corpse-piles her worshippers had left choking up the streets.  Full of children stabbing bodies to walls the way other kids hung up movie posters, and children using the dead as trampolines until their rib cages crunched open into the worst kind of gory confetti, splattered up on their clothes.  The Goddess of Despair’s voice was a little thing in Kokichi’s head, too, a whisper asking him to fall, fall into his worst self, fall into her arms.  It was a seed, planted and ready to sprout, ready to tangle into thorns and squeezing vines that would reshape him into someone messily new. 

Yeah, no thanks.  Kokichi choked, his whole body shuddering – shuddering down to his soul.    There was something so dark and sick, there, rotten in a way even Korekiyo’s graveyard-city couldn’t be.  Someone just _waiting_ , waiting for whatever it was that had given her purpose to start up again like a piece of almost forgotten music.

To Korekiyo’s credit, he was a _bit_ more worried about Kokichi than whether or not the mask had shattered when it got itself dropped unceremoniously away into the dark of the labyrinth.  And when Kokichi said he’d seen something while he had the mask on – something a few rooms down, burning warm and almost disgustingly beautiful – Kiyo was like, “ _Oh, okay then_ ,” and they headed off to search that room, next.

That was where they found the God of Hope’s letters, between himself and his faithful.  The survivors, who had stood before the Goddess of Despair and somehow refused to fall. 

Kokichi was surprised by how human the hope god felt, until about midway through reading about him rallying his troops and trying to save people that’d gotten warped beyond themselves –warped into all kinds of monstrous, murder-y things – he realized…  Yeah.  The guy _was_ human.  He was a human who’d been born with really fucked-up luck.  A human who’d taken on the Goddess of Despair herself and somehow risen to become her equal despite everything.  Despite his fragile, terrified mortal heart; despite the fact that he was _really_ bad at spelling, according to Korekiyo, Official Translator of Old-Timey Letters.  Despite how this hope god fell into awkward, sweaty-palmed love with one of his fellow survivors, and the fact that some of his letters were written so shakily that he must have been sobbing as he scribbled them out.   

By the time Kokichi and Korekiyo got to the bottom of the hope god’s letter pile, they realized two things.  One, even after all this guy’s friends had died and he’d shed his own humanity like snakeskin, he was still fighting.  Still balancing the despair goddess, like two perfectly even sides on one of those Lady Justice scale thingies.  He had shoved her back, somehow, so that they were locked together unbreaking even then, neither giving in completely and neither willing to break free if it meant losing.  A sort of awful waltz, where one dancer was trying to stab her partner’s eyes out and then murder everybody on the planet, and the other dancer was just trying desperately to hold on.  You know.  Probably like most normal waltzes, then? 

And also, _also_ , Nagito wasn’t the first to receive the offer -- the luck -- he’d been born with.  The Goddess of Despair wanted a new challenger pretty badly, ‘cause then she’d get to break them, next.  She’d try and ruin them the way she hadn’t been able to ruin this poor guy who’d stumbled into representing hope through unlucky accident.  So her dance partner would have to sort out the mess, maybe?  So the God of Hope would blink, and stumble, and put this new person before himself the way he’d done with so many others before.  Another chance to take him out of the game; another chance to see what he’d be like despairing.  Or “dead” would work, too, if she _still_ couldn’t snap the hope god’s soul like a pencil. 

No, Nagito Komaeda wasn’t the first.  He was just – possibly? – the only one who’d realize what he might’ve been chosen for.  He was _also_ the only one described outright in the God of Hope’s letters, which…  Yeah, that was a real joy to read.  There was this guy who’d hired Shuichi and worried about getting his boyfriend caught in a freak landslide or run over by a rampaging piano on wheels, laughing all rattling and beyond-dead.  There was Mr. Komaeda with the Goddess of Despair’s shriveled hand sewn over the shaking, bloody rags that had only _just_ been his wrist.  The rotten meat would heal as soon as it became a part of him, apparently.  Turning fresh and bleeding, again, stirring all their life together and ready for the change.  Nagito would hold her hand up, eyes spinning and murky and sicker than sick, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything but laugh.

Everything would start again, then.  Start new, and stranger.  Maybe Nagito would become something like what this accidental God of Hope was, in the end, waltzing with the despair goddess again.  Or maybe, maybe he would fall. 

“Well, shit,” Kokichi said.  “I guess this means Shuichi’s not gonna get a lot of sleep tonight, after all?”

“Mm,” Korekiyo agreed.  “And I’d prefer _you_ wake him, if you don’t mind.”

Apparently, Shuichi hadn’t been easy to wake up back in high school, either.  That was kinda a fun thing to know.  But they definitely had a job that could ruin at least one stranger’s life to do… Another day in the detective business, right?  Uh.  Maybe _this_ was why Kaito opted out of the supernatural cases.  Well, this and nearly shitting himself whenever the curtains fluttered, or whenever someone – not Kokichi! – whispered ghostly things at him from a coat closet or whatever.  That guy was probably back at home with his stupid telescope and his girlfriend who collected knives.  _Kaito_ didn’t have to tell anyone they’d been chosen by an evil goddess that week.  So unfair!

Korekiyo made strong, sharp coffee – the kind Kokichi softened with a ton of sugar and still kinda winced at.  They searched around and found a couple other relevant artifacts: the Goddess of Despair’s bloodless, twitching fingers, for instance, which Nagito was supposed to cut off his own hand to wear.  Smelled like old death and relatively new embalming fluid.  Korekiyo had an eye of hers floating around in a jar of what looked like zombie Jell-O, too, and half her squirming, dangerous tongue.  He chortled for a while over the myths he’d learned about this despair goddess, all of which were really sucky in Kokichi’s humble opinion. 

He wondered aloud what the God of Hope’s human name had been, but no one seemed to know anymore.  Even Kiyo, who sealed the letters up in a fancy old stuff-preserving box before offering them to Shuichi to take back home and hand over like a case solved.  Borrowed on a temporary basis, you understand.  Like with any other library loan, except that Kiyo might actually rip somebody’s nerves out instead of charging overdue fees.

Kokichi knew Shuichi hated giving people awful news, even when it was just that his hunch had been right all along and it might take a little more than some protective amulets to solve whatever’d gone wrong.  So, naturally, he offered to call Hajime up on Korekiyo’s clunky old phone for him.  (It was a pretty great phone, actually – had one of those spinny number wheels, like in movies.  Kokichi’d been kind of wanting to use it anyway!)  Shuichi paused for a second, though, and sighed deep.  Kokichi knew there was a time when Shuichi really, really hadn’t wanted to be a detective at all, supernatural or otherwise, but it was hard to say what he would have wanted to become instead.  One of these days, Kokichi was gonna get a decent answer out of him.

Shuichi rubbed Kokichi’s shoulder a little, and offered, “Oh, no.  It’s alright.  I owe them an explanation.  Honestly, they’re probably waiting on me by now…”

Kokichi grumbled something about how many graveyard cities _Hajime and Nagito_ had trudged through looking for answers, but they all knew awful luck and a sprawling mess of unquiet ghosts probably went together about as well as Kaito and a spoof alien documentary.  (Kokichi knew _that_ one from experience.) 

Hajime got really quiet on the phone, apparently, when Shuichi murmured a couple awkward apologies about gods.  About gods and hopefully-avoidable destinies; about despair and so much gross, senseless death.  In the background somewhere, Nagito exclaimed that he’d _known_ shitty things were going to happen – he’d been suspicious ever since Hajime managed to avoid being on the train he usually took one morning when it crashed.  To Kokichi’s highly trained, D.I.C.E.-leader ears, Nagito sounded about as apologetic receiving the preview-explanation as Shuichi had while giving it.  He sounded embarrassed and resigned, too, almost the way someone might while confessing how a prank had inspired their boyfriend’s detective partner to try changing the agency’s locks. 

Maybe the God of Hope had sounded like that, sometimes, dealing with his own weird luck.  Maybe the day would come when Nagito’d realize he was never gonna really die, even after he buried Hajime somewhere.  Even after he buried everyone else who knew his human name.

Kokichi wondered how much they were gonna tell Nagito and Hajime, truth be told.  He wondered what kind of choice they were going to ask them to make.  Shuichi’d arranged a time to meet with the pair of them, just a couple days down the line, at some fancy rich-person’s café Kokichi’d never been to.  Guess they’d find out then, wouldn’t they? 

Korekiyo said the library of the dead would suck with them gone – well, not in so many words.  But he definitely led Shuichi away for some Friend Time before they had to go.  


	4. “Truth”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again~ Happy Wednesday, and thank you so much for reading!!
> 
> I really like when Kokichi talks about free will/possibilities in canon. :D The infinite possibilities of lies, and all that… Ahhh, those lines were cool. So I tried to incorporate a little of that spirit into this fic, along with some of the themes at the end of v3 about making your own truth. Hopefully that came through okay! I like imagining a Kokichi that really believes in choice and possibilities. :) 
> 
> ANYWAY, thank you very very much for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day!!

_Kokichi_ , meanwhile, stuck his tongue out at the spooky Korekiyo-ish ghost lady on the wall and took a while to get packed for their trip back home.  He caught a little laughter drifting in from the next room – Shuichi said stuff like _“Oh, do you remember when Kaito got us to marathon all of that sci-fi show and we missed class without realizing it?”_ and _“I’ve always wondered why you still wear all your masks!  If she wasn’t still comfortable without a skin you’d tell me, right?”  _

“She” again.  That mysterious, probably pretty messed up “she,” watching all the time through her smirking paint.  It wasn’t any fun being out of the loop, but maybe Kokichi could find it in himself to be a little grateful this one time.  Sounded like “she” had taken a while to get used to being dead, anyway, and those were usually the most depressing ghosts.  Depressing like telling a complete stranger that some Goddess of Despair had been daydreaming about breaking him since before he was born; depressing like prank blueprints that accidentally got put in the washing machine and turned to mush.    

Kokichi only peeked around Kiyo’s room a little bit, too – not spying, per se – and Shuichi got a good, long tour of the map Korekiyo was painting to chart out the spiraling, crooked graveyard world around his library.  Every wheezing crypt; every maggot-squishy plot of dirt.  It had to be admitted, Korekiyo’s map was about as gorgeous as it was full of waking horror stories.  It also had _far_ more places marked _“Depends on the Day”_ or _“Never Visit”_ than any map Kokichi’d ever seen before. 

Korekiyo waved after them for a long time, when they finally blew that haunted popsicle stand.  Shuichi assured him they’d come by again soon.  They’d carry back more stories, more pieces of the living world to add to his labyrinthine archive.  Maybe they’d even get to taunt the possibly-real minotaur next time!  And you know, Kiyo could count on promises from someone like Shuichi.  D.I.C.E. had freaked out the first time they’d caught him in a delicate white lie – some of Kokichi’s teammates hadn’t been able to stop teasing him for so long that their merciful Supreme Leader had declared the game nice and over.  It was just, Shuichi obviously meant so _well_.  Aw, even just thinking about it made Kokichi sort of want to do something shocking enough to get him all slack-jawed and swept away again.      

They only almost died a handful of times on the trip back to the real world, with its train stations and newspaper tumbleweeds getting soggy in the street puddles – mundane as anything and kind of wonderful for it.  Kokichi thought that was a pretty successful journey, all things considered.  He’d gotten a picture of Shuichi breathless and digging their way out of somebody’s hungry grave, even, which actually turned out pretty well.  (Don’t worry, he helped dig, too.  He just liked keeping a record of amazing things they did together, that’s all.  Sheesh.  He was thinking about making a scrapbook!)

Roots were stretching down around Shuichi’s head and stuff in that picture, grabbing for all his wet, sweet blood.  There was earth in his hair and a grim, Batman-y resolve in his eyes.  He had somebody’s polished spine-link dagger stuck in his belt, too, which they were _trying_ to return to the loose, sagging-rotten hand of whatever guy had used it to carve off the faces of his victims a gazillion years ago or something.  Gross stuff, but pretty par for the course when it came to escaping most enormous graveyard cities.  Kokichi imagined.

There were crypt-mazes to be wandered through and luring, life-starved voices to ignore, but eventually they made it on a train headed back home.  Kokichi got in a little trouble after demonstrating knife tricks for some of the other travelers in their cabin, and he may or may not have had to fast-talk their way on to another train quick.  It was worth it just for the way Shuichi grinned at him, relieved, when he managed it.  The way Shuichi murmured, “You really like making people _gasp_ , don’t you?” like he almost thought it was funny the way D.I.C.E. might have. 

Kokichi _did_ like making people gasp, yeah.  But he liked when Shuichi accepted him more, _and_ he liked getting pulled close to discuss case-finishing strategies.  For some reason, it really didn’t feel like this “Nagito’s Luck” case was anywhere near over…  Except that they’d done exactly what they were paid for, right?  They’d uncovered an explanation, even if it was a pretty awful one.  Just like the douchey murderer face-thief had his dagger back, in Korekiyo’s graveyard city, even if that dagger was objectively awful, too.

The train rattled along, and Kokichi bought a couple sodas from the first cart that passed by with refreshments.  He propped a notebook over Shuichi’s eyes to block the light when his boyfriend drifted to sleep for a little while, and tied back on his checkered D.I.C.E. scarf once he was fairly sure there weren’t any of Kiyo’s ghost-neighbors around who’d love to strangle him with it. 

There were a ton of messages from different D.I.C.E. members waiting on his phone when they wound up back somewhere with decent service.  Not even reading about some of their latest heists and exciting card game-conquests made the idea of telling Nagito he’d inherited a God of Hope’s gross battle feel any less disgusting, though.  Kokichi told his teammates as much and got a bunch of different pieces of advice texted back, along with strings of nonsense emojis and several pictures of a cat they’d found.  This advice ranged from telling Mr. Komaeda that, oops, nevermind, looks like they hadn’t managed to detective out anything at all…  Even if that meant downplaying the noble Detective Saihara’s considerable talents and possibly a bad Yelp review…  To convincing him he was some sort of anomaly and Shuichi was only talking about gods because he should definitely try starting up his own religion.  See how _that_ went.  

Kokichi played along with those ideas for a while, but in the end…  In the end, what was life without choice?  Without the freedom to decide what to do, or who to be, or whether to replace Kaito’s fancy astronaut-test study guides with wads of Silly String or melty gummy candy?  (Or, you know…  _Both_.  The obvious answer to that particular dilemma.)  They could give Nagito a chance to react to his truth, or smooth it all over with pretty, friendly lies.  Make his life a little easier, as completely as they could. 

Kokichi said it felt like two sides of his personality were thumb wrestling each other right about then, and his D.I.C.E. teammates all agreed that was a showdown they’d genuinely want to see. 

 _“Bring popcorn,”_ Kokichi wrote back, _“One of us Kokichi-s is probably losing a thumb.”_   And then he thought about Nagito’s hand maybe getting cut off someday – sawed away and replaced by a shivery withered one with bright red inhuman fingernails– and got sort of sad.  Nagito with his broken sandcastle; Nagito who still looked surprised when his boyfriend threw a warm, laughing arm around him.  Nobody deserved to be bound to a Goddess of Despair’s hand like that, not without some kind of choice.  What if it happened anyway, no matter what they did?  Or you know, what if Mr. Komaeda wound up where he was in the God of Hope’s letters just because Shuichi and Kokichi wrote out a shiny new lie for him?  Maybe they’d be the reason anything horrible came true in the first place.

Kokichi was still pondering the nature of detective work and free will and all that – along with bantering about everything he’d missed with his D.I.C.E. members – when the train finally made it back where they were going.  Home to their real lives; home to their hideouts and detective offices, home to phone calls from Kaito asking where the heck he was supposed to pick them up.  

Thankfully for that wannabe-astronaut’s nerves, Shuichi was awake enough by then to stop Kokichi before he sent Kaito driving around in circles.  They wound up back in his car, a tiny rocket ship swaying all cheerfully on his rearview mirror, listening to optimistic music and learning all about what Kaito and his girlfriend Maki had been up to.  Apparently they’d gotten ambushed with a new robbery-and-murder case while heading home from the archery range one day, and had already agreed Shuichi would work it.  So that was…  Great?  Had the next few weeks lined up for him, apparently.  The archery had gone alright, too, though Kaito still hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask Maki to move in with him.  All that nonsense, blah blah blah.  Kokichi _knew_ she wanted to – they’d talked about it and everything, though of course he’d gotten threatened into secrecy immediately afterwards when she realized who she was talking to. 

(Kokichi _had_ been pretty convincingly disguised at the time.  Don’t ask.) 

A couple days passed, then.  Kokichi ran with D.I.C.E. again, and Shuichi started stalking around town to interview suspects with Kaito at his heel and really obviously mimicking the poses cops struck in action movies.  Shuichi texted over occasional updates, but it just wasn’t the same as coming along with him sometimes.  Wasn’t the same as getting relied on, and gathering pictures for that scrapbook. 

 After a while, Kokichi called, “Hey, wish me luck, everybody!” over his shoulder to D.I.C.E. – (one of his teammates answered, _“Ah, boss, I get it!  Because of that Nagito guy’s luck, right?”_ and Kokichi told her he was impressed 'cause he hadn’t even been thinking about that) – and headed out to that fancy-pants café to meet Shuichi.  They got there early, both so Kokichi could sample ridiculously ornate tiny cakes without making his detective feel unprofessional and so they could go over their plan of attack a couple more times.  The case still didn’t feel concluded in any good sense – that God of Hope and his Goddess of Despair, bound together and probably miserable for the rest of forever?  Yeah, that might not ever feel “finished,” not unless an end was put to the whole thing once and for all.  If the goddess could be locked away somehow, so the guy could just be human again and dead like all his friends. 

 That was a sad thing to wish for, but you know?  Kokichi felt like the God of Hope deserved his human name back, even if nothing else.  Sometimes, you just had to stop playing the game to win.  Had to end things, even if it meant chopping certain board games up with an actual guillotine.

They could bury the guy somewhere nice, even.  Korekiyo had all kinds of ghostly real estate.

When showtime rolled around, Kokichi thought he and Shuichi knew what they were going to do. They didn’t have to like it, of course.  But choice was such an enormous part of being human, even a human scripted for godly destiny – if Kokichi didn’t believe in possibilities he wouldn’t have had _nearly_ as much fun lying as he did!  And Shuichi was right, wasn’t he, about detective work being all in service to the truth?  Using sneaky means and investigation to peel back the world and reveal its secrets!  Kokichi’d never try to take that away from his detective, in the same way they had an unspoken understanding about Shuichi never throwing out any of the half-finished D.I.C.E. plans Kokichi left around his apartment.  Shuichi was going to reveal the truth, if Mr. Komaeda and Mr. Hinata chose to hear it.  He probably couldn’t help wanting to do that.   

 But truth didn’t have to be the end of things.   Kokichi figured Shuichi was lucky, having him around to point that out!  They would give Nagito Komaeda and his boyfriend what they knew, sure, but they’d hand it over with possibility and chance tied on like a ribbon.  A multiple-choice future, where they could still grab on to their favorite possibility even if it felt impossible. Even if it felt like lying. And maybe telling it over and over, believing in it, could help make it true.

Or, you know.  _Or_ until Kokichi and Shuichi both had to find some way to try and avert a new catastrophe, if Nagito embraced the potential murder-and-mayhem side of his destiny.  Maybe they’d have to convince Korekiyo to destroy the Goddess of Despair’s hand or something – that sounded super hard, even in itself.  Maybe they’d just create some new problems, and not even the kind they’d get paid to solve.

In the meantime, though, Shuichi was going to do what he could for his still-breathing clients to find peace.  See?  He was defenseless in the face of those happy-couple photographs.  He was gonna show these people the same kind of answers he would want to know, and Kokichi was gonna head right into the mess of stupid possibilities with him just the way he’d trekked to Korekiyo’s library past all those eager dead.  Past mud that had clung to his feet like a second pair of shoes, and spiderwebs he was still swabbing out of his backpack.    

Nagito held the door for Hajime, when they arrived, soft flyaway hair in his face and a tired smile on like he wasn’t even nervous.  It was possible Hajime looked worried enough for the both of them, ordering drinks for the table, muttering about being sorry they were a little late. 

Kokichi didn’t ask what had happened, though he figured it probably had something to do with the fresh gashes on Nagito’s cheek.  They’d been tenderly bandaged up and smeared with a bunch of sticky-looking Neosporin, but the café people still seemed a little too relieved when they asked for a private room.  Didn’t want the other customers looking at a lot of oozy blood, did they?  People might start thinking twice about ordering all those fancy strawberry tarts and stuff.

Hajime hung his bag up on the edge of his chair and stared into Shuichi’s eyes like he was about to challenge him to a duel or something.  He’d taken off work early to be there, though he said his friend Chiaki had been happy to cover for him.  He was still wearing a cutesy video game shop nametag, crooked and pinned to his wrinkly shirt. 

Kokichi squeezed Shuichi’s hand under the table just before his detective started talking.


	5. You’re My Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi again, and welcome to chapter 5~ The last chapter of this fic!! Thanks so much for reading, and for sticking with the story all the way through. :’) It turned out a lot longer than I thought it would!! Sorry for any mistakes, as always -- I'm a bit nervous about this one, ahahaha. Hopefully it turned out okay.
> 
> A couple things:  
> 1\. I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t influenced by Nagito’s/Komaeda’s Island Mode dating route. I definitely tried to reference/reinterpret some of the stuff he says at the end, during his fancy final scene~~~ That was the plan the whole time, although most of this chapter has transformed a LOT from what my original plan looked like. (Except for the end. The very, very end – you’ll see.)  
> 2\. Apologies in advance if this is too sappy. :P 
> 
> I hope you enjoy the chapter, and the rest of your day!!! Thank you!

Shuichi cleared his throat; he smiled shakily and set the sealed envelope down between everyone on the tablecloth.  He met Kokichi’s eyes, for just a second, and Kokichi nodded at him as encouragingly as he knew how.  It was the sort of nod he might offer up to one of his D.I.C.E. members just before they leaned back into a rope he’d secured for them – trusting he’d tied it on to something good, and even if the knots gave he’d at least end up hurtling over the edge with them while trying to fix it.  It meant something that Shuichi looked over for reassurance like that before offering Mr. Hinata and Mr. Komaeda their truth.  Made Kokichi feel bubbly as shaken-up soda, inside.  Made him feel like they were becoming the team he’d always known they could be, even back when Shuichi was mostly convinced he was some kind of trickster spirit.       

“As I said on the phone, we have answers for you, if you want them,” Shuichi said.  “I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say, of course…  I’m sorry.”

“Oh, I’m sure I won’t,” said Nagito, voice gentle and sort of scratchy sing-song.  “But that’s alright.  Thank you for going to all this trouble, Detective Saihara.” 

Nagito reminded them of how he’d gotten horrible news plenty of times, so Shuichi shouldn’t look so much like he expected someone to lunge at him in a rage – he joked that hopefully whatever was in the envelope wouldn’t be a deal-breaker for Hajime or anything, which made his boyfriend elbow him in the ribs.

“Come on, you know I’m on your side, right?” Hajime said.  “ _I_ hired these guys, didn’t I?”

Nagito whispered that he knew, he _knew_ , but it was still strange how “someone like him” could be allowed to feel sure of that.  He’d already gotten so many promises, so many gentle words late at night when everything felt too real and clinging to hope got sort of hard.  Sometimes he found it difficult to believe, even then.  Forgive him.

Kokichi could’ve said something about that _“clinging to hope”_ line there, but instead he said, “You’re gonna find _this_ difficult to believe, too!” although he didn’t really mean it.  He’d seen plenty of the reasons Nagito Komaeda had to believe in the impossible logic of his world.  All the times he’d won radio contests he never even entered one minute, only to hear his most embarrassing phone calls broadcasted on that same station the next...  All the times he’d stepped outside wearing new clothes Hajime bought him only to get accidentally mistaken for a murderer and interrogated so long he missed all his exams.  If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.  If it wasn’t his parents dying in an inexplicable meteorite/plane hijacker accident, it was a poison leak that might’ve melted his skin if he’d stayed sleeping just a couple minutes longer.  Being chosen for a scheming despair goddess’s revenge plan might not even be the scariest thing that could’ve happened to Mr. Komaeda that day.   

Shuichi told their clients what he could.  He told them about the crinkly brown old-timey papers they had waiting in a sealed envelope, and Hajime and Nagito studied Korekiyo’s translations together, even taking the time to read through his gushing tangents about etymology and myth.  A few times, Hajime cussed under his breath, and whenever _that_ happened Nagito slipped the offending page to the bottom of the pile without saying a word. 

Shuichi told about the shriveled hand twitching in one of Korekiyo’s display cases back in the library of the dead, waiting only too eagerly to mix its ancient, inhuman blood in with Nagito’s own.  He told about that row of despair goddess masks, that one horrible, beautiful face carved obsessively again and again and again, always different.  Always scheming, always hungry.  He described those streets full of splattered corpse-meat Kokichi had seen when he peeked at the world through the Goddess of Despair’s clear blue-crystal eyes.  Bodies plucked at by scraggly crows; bodies cooking under the sun.  In this despair goddess’s world, humanity was only a little more meat to smear into the roadways.  Nagito had been chosen for that world – written into the Goddess of Despair’s next act.  As her champion, or her downfall, or her newest dance partner.  Or all three, somehow, stretching his arms out in beatific, laughing surrender under a sky choked with the smell of the dead.    

Shuichi confessed how they were afraid Nagito’s future might’ve already been scripted for him, here – that it might only be a matter of time, or that all the dominoes might have been stacking themselves up right fucking then – but he said Mr. Komaeda had some sort of decision to make all the same.  Some sort of agency.  It was a choice, in the end, to stand as that nameless God of Hope had stood.  Or not.  It would be a choice, too, to go home and live quietly.  It would’ve been a choice to flip the Goddess of Despair off and refuse to play her game, or to pluck all the glinting eyes out of her masks, or to go searching for the God of Hope’s true name. 

Nagito could make a different choice, if he wanted to, and hold on to it until he did everything in his power to make it real.  The Goddess of Despair hadn’t taken his choices, or his humanity.  Not yet, however things turned out.

By the time Shuichi finished explaining the truths they already knew, Nagito’s lips had dropped open a little.  He had a familiar woozy look in his eye. 

“You know,” said Nagito Komaeda, “If you had told me any of this back in high school, I would’ve taken it up in an instant.  I mean…  A _reason_ , for all of this?  For – for what happened to my parents, and – a reason for _me_?  I would have…  I would’ve given anything, to become a God of Hope.” 

For a second, Kokichi thought he heard a clutching desperation seeping into Nagito’s voice.  A mania; a wanting not entirely unlike the Goddess of Despair’s herself.  He could imagine the Nagito scribbled into the hope god’s letters all too clearly, then.  Bent over himself, his purpose becoming like a fever.  Long, long gone.  Someone who might prove the Goddess of Despair’s point, if he wasn’t careful, even while he was trying so desperately to champion the hope that had kept him going through ridiculously awful luck all his life.  That someone was waiting just under Nagito Komaeda’s skin right then, and if their world had been only a little different Kokichi _knew_ he might’ve already come true.   

But then Hajime took a halting breath and muttered Nagito’s name, sounding afraid despite himself – then Nagito jolted, and smiled almost too warmly.  He said, “But I won’t.  Wouldn’t.  Not _now_.  I…  Don’t need it, the same way.  I have my own hope.”  He paused.  Licked his lips.  Said, “I have you, too, Hajime.  I never _mean_ to scare you.”

Hajime said he knew Nagito didn’t do it on purpose, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still scare him, asshole.  Nagito laughed and ran a hand through his perpetually windswept hair.  Said yeah, yeah he really could, couldn’t he?

Once Shuichi had offered their clients the truth, he offered them a row of futures to go with it.  A row of possible truths to believe in, just the way Kokichi had said.  He asked if Nagito and Hajime wanted to be left with the photographs; he asked if they’d rather the notes Shuichi had brought them get set on fire, or flushed down the toilet in helpless little spiraling pieces.  (Kokichi’s ideas, both of them.  He’d _also_ suggested letting D.I.C.E. experiment with a bunch of crackly test-tube chemicals, exploding the papers and/or turning them to something useful like Silly Putty, but Shuichi pointed out that might be a little complicated to explain.)  This case could be kept locked quietly away in Detective Saihara’s office, in the dusty back closets where no reporters ever got to go.

Or, finally, Shuichi offered to keep the investigation open.  Offered to keep it going as long as it needed to end the story once and for all, if they could.  To be honest, if Kokichi hadn’t thought it might be sort of a mood-killer he would’ve slipped his phone out and taken a picture of Shuichi right that very second.  For the scrapbook, obviously.  He wanted to preserve Detective Saihara the way he was there, seared into his mind for all time.  Shuichi looking stern, brave and reluctantly confident.  Shuichi’s brows furrowed, concentrating and afraid.  Ready for all kinds of crazy paranormal-detective-ing nonsense. 

Shuichi said, “My partner, Kokichi here, told me recently that sometimes the only way to win a game is to end it.  Permanently.  Something about murdering board games?  Um…  I think maybe…  Maybe he’s right.  We don’t have to be finished with your case yet.  Do you want to see if we can _end_ this Goddess of Despair’s game?  End the challenge, end the balance…  End everything?” 

Nagito Komaeda threaded his brittle arms around himself, staring into nothingness for a long, long second.  Kokichi couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was seeing – maybe himself as he could’ve been, becoming Hope to balance and possibly even conquer Despair for all time.  Maybe the Goddess of Despair’s bleeding streets, or the God of Hope’s shaky, human handwriting.  Maybe Hajime, still sitting right there next to him and bunching the frilly tablecloth up in his fists.  Hajime with a hilariously puzzled/horrified expression on, like he had a ton of things to say right about then, most of them really angry…  Possibly involving a tight grip on Nagito’s coat and some of that _“shaking sense into you”_ action that turned up in comics and stuff.

But Mr. Komaeda did make a choice, in the end, and he made it sounding breathless and full of a quiet, guilty regret.  He said this might’ve been the chance another version of himself could have died for – could have killed for without another thought.  He said he knew hope could rise back stronger from despair…  He sometimes felt like he’d always known that, more completely than his own human name, more completely than his frantic heartbeat.  People blazed brilliantly, rebuilt after they were shattered – phoenixes burning inside fragile, bleeding skins.  Part of him ached to take all the fear and ruin inside himself and rise to a divine challenge.  Drown the Goddess of Despair out with a hope as brilliant and sure as life itself. 

He _ached_ , yes, but he wouldn’t go to her.  Wouldn’t become what she asked him to be.  Not now, not here.  Nagito had a life, and a purpose, and hope he hadn’t known he could carry with him everywhere until he worked up the nerve to ask Hajime Hinata if he could stand being his friend.  And when he thought about someone else born with his luck – born to a world both out to celebrate and destroy them, born to a world that would teach them their personal happiness could only ever lead to pain – it made him feel sick.  That’s what Shuichi had said would happen, right?  Had already been happening, for so many lives?  If Nagito didn’t rise to the challenge, the Goddess of Despair would select someone new. 

“You’re hired, again, Detective Saihara,” Mr. Komaeda murmured.  “I know you said you’re not sure what you’ll find, if you continue investigating.  I know you said we might not…  We might not be able to _use_ any of it.  But we should end this.  No one else should have to make this choice.  And maybe that’s hope conquering despair, anyway?  In a new way she never even saw coming…  In a final way.”    

“Maybe,” Kokichi agreed, although he didn’t sound as convinced as he’d wanted to.  He said it again, more dramatically this time, “Oh, yeah, maybe!”  He plastered a confident smile on, the same way he might scribble clown-related graffiti on something with D.I.C.E.  If your hand slipped, you just kept right on painting.  “We’ll do our best, okay?”

And _that_ was how Kokichi and Shuichi got hired back, as a duo – hah!  Hear that, Momota? – for a bunch more journeys into all the _“Korekiyo’s Spooky Death-Library”-s_ of their world.  Maybe, by the end of it all, they would have dug up the God of Hope’s long-lost name.  Maybe the Goddess of Despair’s ruinous dance would shudder to a stop, and her masks would quit their hopeless, toxic whispering and grow so still.  No lurking apocalypse, no singing children with giddy despair masks on, no absurd luck jerking poor strangers around like cosmic puppet strings.  Yeah: that would’ve been a scrapbook entry for sure. 

They could champion possibilities in the face of stuck-up destiny – _and_ D.I.C.E. could prank an actual goddess.  _“About time, boss,”_ they would probably say when Kokichi told them.  _“What’s the point of fucking with the Togami Group when we could be pranking in the spiritual big leagues?”_     

But no, not quite yet.   

For now, Mr. Komaeda and his boyfriend went home, Hajime leaning in close and whispering to him – whispering something that made him laugh in a nice way.  Hajime would switch out Nagito’s giant mysterious bandage soon, too, hissing at him to keep still or they’d get antibacterial shit in his eye again.  Hajime would squeeze his human, living hands – not a despair goddess’s, not a stranger’s, not yet – and Nagito would promise to do what he could to keep them that way.  To keep true to the choice he’d made, even if a part of him might always insist he could be so much more than he was. 

Mr. Hinata thanked both Shuichi and Kokichi before they left.  Sure, maybe the Saihara Detective Agency hadn’t given him tools to help his boyfriend deal with all that rollercoaster-luck – (except for a couple charms Korekiyo’d made, though even _he’d_ kept talking about how those couldn’t really stand up to a deranged goddess) – but they’d given him a chance to keep Nagito’s whole world steadier.  Hajime also handed over the envelope again, with all its musty ancient letters inside.  With its masks and its visions, with its ideas for Nagito’s birthright.  That destiny finally explaining so much of his life.  A destiny he said he might’ve wanted _more_ than life, once, if they’d gotten to him just a handful of years before.

Now, Nagito wanted to stay at home – stay _with_ his home.  And you know?  Kokichi really got that.   He and Shuichi would need those letters for whatever investigations were waiting.

Shuichi went to meet Kaito and Maki in his warm, buttery golden-lamped detective office, next, talking them both through everything that’d happened.  Telling them he was gonna be working a couple cases at once for a while, which…  Cool…  It wasn’t like they hadn’t handled _that_ before.  Oh, and one of those cases had gods in it?  Piles of corpses, trips to Korekiyo Shinguji’s library of the dead, masks with wheedling voices crawling into your head and desperate to twist you into the worst version of yourself…?  Um.  Fun?  That was exactly Kaito’s speed, and definitely not the kind of thing that made him want to climb out a window and shimmy down the fire escape. 

Kokichi trotted off, too.  He’d end up in Shuichi’s apartment before his detective got back, was the plan.  It was supposed to be a surprise – he’d thought maybe Shuichi would ask why he wasn’t at home in D.I.C.E.’s hideout – but probably they both knew why.   Kokichi’s teammates definitely knew, and had been messaging him jokey-romantic advice for a while now.  They understood missing people, after all, and if _D.I.C.E_. didn’t know how often their Supreme Leader thought about Detective Saihara...  Well.  They weren’t exactly being his loyal henchmen, then, were they?  It was cute, Kokichi’s teammates said.  Cute in a diabolical, appropriately-terrifying way.

Shuichi didn’t say anything weird when he found Kokichi in his apartment, curled on his couch and surrounded by the beginnings of a mess, the clutter that kinda followed him wherever he set up shop.  Crumpled papers; half-empty snack wrappers.  Honestly, Shuichi didn’t even seem surprised.  He _did_ run a hand through Kokichi’s flippy hair as he passed by, though.  Shuichi came to sit next to him on the couch, taking a peek at the game he was playing on his phone.  He asked Kokichi if he’d like to watch a funny movie or something before they went to bed.  Before another day came to get them.  He tucked an arm around him, and Kokichi scooted over until he was flopped practically in his detective’s lap.  He smiled up, tauntingly, but Shuichi didn’t ask him to move off. 

It felt like there was plenty of time before morning, just then.  Plenty of time before Shuichi read the letter Korekiyo Shinguji had sent, scolding them for the fake ants Kokichi’d left around his death-library’s bathroom; plenty of time before they opened the next chapter in the Goddess of Despair’s investigation, trying to figure out if there was a way to shatter her grip on the world like glass.  Like a soul, warped beyond itself by a goddess with way too much time on her hands.  Everything could wait, for a night at least.  Just like Nagito and Hajime, they weren’t alone.  Kokichi might’ve said, _“Just like Korekiyo and his books/piles of possessed and still-bleeding artifacts,”_ but maybe that was a little mean for such a comfortable moment.  _“Just like Korekiyo and his brand-new army of fake bathroom ants?”_   You’re welcome, of course. 

There were so many more of Shuichi’s stories to be a part of, Kokichi knew – just like there were so many ways their case could still go very, very wrong –  but this next story was quiet, and simple, and involved a pile of blankets dragged up on the couch.  They were home, for a while at least.  Kokichi told himself things could only possibly end well.  He didn’t necessarily believe it yet, mind you, but he’d made some pretty crazy lies into his reality already.  There’d been a time _before_ he was an actual nefarious clown gang leader, after all.  There’d been a time before Shuichi Saihara would’ve given him his cellphone number, nevermind free reign of his apartment and all the secrets he kept in squeaky drawers most people weren’t supposed to know about.  Nagito Komaeda had chosen “home” that day, too, and Kokichi told himself that meant he could be okay.  Mr. Komaeda’s choice could matter, and the case could work itself out if they gave it what they had to give.

 _And_ if they got lucky.  Haha, get it?

Darkness stretched with a cleansing, tender rain outside their – Shuichi’s? – window, and the noises trickling in from the world beyond felt farther and farther away.


End file.
